One's orientation or value system defines one's perception of the function
of government. The greedy miser thinks government should satiate his money
hunger. The religiously devout might argue that government should prepare
everyone for eternal life. Among the various definitions, one that encompasses
the rest is probably the best. As all problems have a time content, so can
all definitions of government be expressed in a value system of time. The
miser's money is time. The pursuer of eternal life has time in mind.

A timistic description of government's function is "to divine time rather
than to destroy it."*"Divine" has a dual meaning: "to
find" (as with a divining rod) and "sacred (deity)". The divine duty of
government is to find more time for its citizens.

This definition is central to the analysis of life as a chain of time. As
a large temporal process, government should organize the human environment
for maximum productivity per capita. For maximum productivity of time,
intraflatic and supraflatic activities must end. Such actions involve stealing
time from the wrong places: one's fellow citizens or the government itself.

"Time" is central to the less inclusive definitions of government as well.
In wanting more money, the miser actually is wanting more time, for currency
is the symbol of time. A miserly mentality, however, is willing to weaken
the government by cheating on taxes to gain more money.

For the religious believer, government's role in the national pursuit of
eternal life clearly involves the concept of time. Unfortunately, the religiously
devout sometimes reject the commitment needed to keep the secular world organized
and running so they can maintain their devout lifestyle. Many religious orders
would lose their free time to practice their faith if everyone observed the
strictures of their religion. Often, they do not render unto Caesar that
which Caesar needs to maintain economic stability for religious freedom.
Many a religion would fold due to a collapsing economic infrastructure if
everyone tried to conduct their lives according to the tenets of that religion.

Taxes: A Loan of Time to Solve Problems

Government should solve the common public problems which people cannot or
will not solve themselves. Again, time is the common denominator: problems
waste people's time. Inflation is the cost of unsolved problems which cheapen
currency. Its existence indicates a failing collection of politicians in
government.

As a public problem-solving process, a government collects taxes. Again,
the concept of time is central to defining government's role. Taxes appropriate
your time in the form of currency.

With taxes--your time--the government hires someone to take care of the problems
that you cannot or will not take care of yourself. In other words, the government
collects a little bit of time from everyone. With this time it hires full-time
specialists to solve problems private citizens can't or won't solve on an
individual basis.

As an institution designed to divine more time, a government may in fact
gain or lose time for its citizens. In effect, taxes constitute lending one's
time to government. Like all loans, one wants the principle and interest
returned. When one's loan is not repaid by time-savings, one has a losing
proposition. Few benefit from our privately sponsored laws, which are in
essence legisflated privileges affecting only small groups of taxpayers.
Most Americans are not receiving time-savings from the government's taxes
on and use of their time.

When both taxes and problems increase, politicians are misusing your loan
of time. The government is borrowing more of your time each time they raise
taxes. Yet, you suffer greater losses of time: inflation, unemployment and
violence. Something is wrong. It is the economic models they use: shortsighted
and self-serving rather than farsighted and enlightened.

With the problem-solving benefits of relevant democracy, one can have lower
taxes. The elimination of problems reduces the need to borrow time from the
citizens to organize bureaucratic problem-solvers.

The Time Loss Behind Corruption and Incompetence

A timistic assessment of government provides insights into the nature of
corruption and incompetence. If a politician accepts a $50,000 bribe, the
actual time loss is far worse than any insult to one's morality or
ethics.* The effects of political corruption and
incompetence are evident if one looks at the time content of the briber,
the bribed and the innocent public.

No one gives a bribe or a contribution to a politician without expecting
to receive favorable treatment, i.e., legisflation. When someone benefits
from a special private law, he receives extra wealth for his goods or services.
After bribing a politician, he receives more compensation for his existing
production time. He has inflated his personal income: more money without
increased production.

The legisflator's $50,000 bribe is bad. Yet, the millions of dollars in
legisflated losses dwarf it. Special interests receive millions by legally
over-charging and price-gouging for their time in producing goods or services.
Where do these millions of dollars come from? The dollars come from people
who have had their time cheapened. Every piece of legisflation increased
the value of someone else's time. Economies are zero-sum systems. There cannot
be a dollar of legisflated return without a dollar of legisflated loss and
suffering. No one can have his time overvalued without others simultaneously
having their time cheapened.

Legally allowing someone to overcharge for their time means others must work
longer. The latter suffer a loss in the quality of life. They have fewer
moments of free thought. They lose disposable time when the same goods or
services are tagged with an inflated price.

The hidden and greater loss behind political corruption is not the one-time
bribe. No, the real and larger loss is of many minutes and hours. The
price-gouged citizen loses time every day that legisflation is on the law
books.

The time that the average person loses because of excessive, misused taxation
does not compare to the time loss due to legisflation. Legisflation has prevented
the development of less expensive production and has permitted overcharges
and price-gouging. Few goods and services do not have a legisflated component.
The legisflated cost forces the buyer to work more to afford the product.
Even worse, legisflation eventually denies the buyer an opportunity to use
his time at production: unemployment. Legisflation is a cancerous supraflatic
process that eventually destroys an economy, for people turn from creating
wealth to stealing it through the law-making process.

Legisflation: Time Transfer and Theft, Not Creation

As an arm of government, the function of legislation is to divine more time
for the citizens. Expressed in older economic terms, the function of legislation
is to promote the creation of wealth. When legislators become legisflators
(policy-makers who legalize inflation) they are not promoting the production
of wealth. Rather, they are merely regulating the transfer of wealth from
the productive to the unproductive. Legisflated transfer payments occur in
both the public and private spheres. The fattest sacred cows are in the private
sphere.

Expressed in timistic terms, legisflators do not divine more time. Rather,
they merely take someone's time. They give it to a special someone else.
The taking constitutes a theft, a violation of every moral code that man
has devised.

Profits: Mutual Benefit

Wise policy-makers will write laws that promote profitable transactions for
all parties. Some say that the marketplace should in its subjective way determine
profits. However, an objective assessment is possible. If used, it eliminates
overpaid people who cause inflationary suffering for the underpaid victims
of unfair business transactions.

To be semantically honest, one must begin with the Latin root of profit,
pro esse: to advance or forward being or better
time.* Is a business transaction profitable if both
parties suffer a loss? No. Profitable, if only one person suffers a loss?
No. A profit exists only when both parties advance in the quality of their
lives. This is merely another way of stating that legal laws should not allow
overpayment for services rendered. Inflationary gains on a one-time transaction
return the disadvantaged participant to a lower level of existence.

One's free time quantifies the quality of life. A government should legitimize
laws which structure business transactions to be profitable to all parties,
in both the short- and the long-term. All parties should have more free time
after the transaction.

How can we objectively quantify a human transaction for an ideal profit?
People initiate transactions to solve problems, real or pseudo. Problems
vary in their time loss, that is, the time lost because the problem remains
unsolved. Problems also differ in the time cost to solve them. The difference
between a problem's time loss and time cost is the objective profit or loss
of the activity to solve the problem.

If the time cost to solve the problem is greater than the time loss, then
the transaction is not profitable for one or more parties. The transaction
should not be allowed. Sadly, the most unprofitable transactions in the world
of the 1990s are the elections of corrupt and incompetent politicians. Each
election involves more problems and fewer solutions.

Bill of Rights

A government that does not have a bill of rights is one that will not last.
As its citizenry increases, the number and complexity of problems increase.
If government denies individuals the right to solve their private problems
then the problems grow and become public problems.

The time wasted by unsolved problems becomes an increasing burden on the
economy and the government. Eventually the mass of unsolved problems sinks
the society and the government. To have fewer problems and more time for
itself and its citizens, a government needs a bill of rights. A bill of rights,
such as the first ten amendments, allows each person the right to solve his
own problems.

With problems solved at the source, the time costs are less. The society
is more profitable and can move forward.

Bill of Requirements

A government that does not have a bill of requirements will not last. If
individuals are not required to solve their private problems then the problems
will grow and become public problems.

To have fewer problems and more time for itself and citizens, a government
needs a bill of requirements that requires each person to solve his own problems.
We need a convention to develop a bill of requirements, perhaps ten more
amendments to the Constitution.

Self-Responsibility and Self-Management

A government will not last if it does not require and reward citizen
self-responsibility and self-management. If individuals abdicate responsibility
to solve their problems, the ignored problems will grow in cost. The cost
is in loss of human time--the time loss factor of problems. The rapidly spreading
cancerous mass of problems will destroy the society and government.
Self-responsibility and self-management solve the problems at the source.

Freedoms: A Posteriori

A government that does not qualify individual acts of freedom by the consequences
of those acts is one that will not last. Any action that enslaves someone
to a loss of time, to a gain in problems, or to a forfeiture of freedom is
not an exercise in freedom. Yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theatre is not
exercising freedom of speech. Similarly, all so-called a priori freedoms
need qualification based on the action's result.

If the action leads to a loss of time or to an increase in problems, then
the action was not a constitutional or human freedom. The purported freedom
did not advance or profit anyone. By qualifying the exercise of "freedoms"
a posteriori, according to the consequences, a government can teach its citizens
to stop and think. Fewer problems will plague the nation.

Help That Helps

A government that helps its disadvantaged citizens in a manner which does
not help them to help themselves will not last. In confronting the problems
of life, some people have disadvantages by accident or by birth. An enlightened,
self-serving government will help these people solve their problems.

Some forms of help, unfortunately, make people more dependent and more
disadvantaged. Help that does not help leads to a class of disadvantaged,
dependent people who consume more time than they create. Help that does not
help eventually destroys a government and a society. A nonproducing class
of people increases, which consumes resources.

Long before the government dies, the disadvantaged people die a spiritual
death. The false help enslaves them to a lower standard of living, and denies
them the opportunity to become problem-solvers. Such help withholds from
them the opportunity to become a better human being. In solving more and
larger problems, a homo sapiens experiences and affirms the spiritual being.
The exercise of problem-solving abilities makes him more than just another
animal on the planet earth. A government owes it to itself and to the citizens
to have programs that eventually help capable people to help themselves.

Work Ethic

A government that does not foster and require the work ethic among its citizenry
is a government that will not last. On the world stage, the nation with the
lowest work ethic will have the highest problem rate. Work is solving problems.
Teaching and requiring the work ethic is a tool for fewer problems. Work
improves the quality of life.

Time Disappearing

As a collection of people, an economy is the summation of their individual
time and freedom. A nation like the United States has a quantity of freedom
which reflects the number of unchained minds among its citizenry. A person
with such a mind can focus his attention as he pleases, rather than being
enslaved by the effects of unsolved problems. On the national level, this
degree of freedom changes each day and is quantifiable in terms of time.

Each piece of old or new legisflation decreases the time content of a people.
Each unprofitable transaction diminishes the accumulated time reserves. Each
failure of the Bill of Rights reduces the time surplus for economic emergencies.
Each lack of a Bill of Requirements allows the erosion of time. Each act
of irresponsibility eats away America's time to survive. Each false freedom
wastes more time. Each instance of help that does not help impoverishes the
storehouse of time. The decline of the work ethic is also a decline of time.
Devaluation of a people's time lessens the quality of their lives; dehumanization
and re-animalization occurs.

America is humanity's greatest achievement. Never had a nation been so conceived
in liberty for all. Nowhere had such a diverse people worked so profitably
together to achieve a higher state of being and civilization. America is
dying. As a timistic entity, it is approaching meltdown and disintegration.
Our politicians, entrusted with policing the whole, are responsible for its
death.

Balanced Time Acquisition: Non-Cancerous

If a government is to divine more time for its citizens, the government must
prevent citizens from preying upon each other and their communities.
Cannibalizing one's own kind or economy leads to forms of inflation: intraflation
and supraflation. To survive, one must produce more units of time which requires
destabilizing and destroying other units of time. The quality of that survival
depends on whether these units of time are taken from lower forms of life
or from higher temporal entities. For instance, we can kill humans, animals
or plants for our protein needs. Which is better for humanity?

Cancerous and cannibalistic survival is a dead-end street in the long run.
Eventually it consumes itself rather than organizing itself for mutual long-term
existence. On the human level, and by the timistic definition, government
must prevent economic cancers and cannibalism. It should not allow segments
of the human population to race ahead by cannibalizing the time of other
human beings. Banks reporting record income, from high interest rates that
are bankrupting manufacturing, is an example of poor government regulation.
A government tolerating, aiding or abetting economic cannibalization catalyzes
its own collapse.

Inspired with an understanding of time, a government would prevent temporal
cannibalism and cancer. Existence is a zero-sum entity: an advance is not
without a regression. The closer the temporal destabilization to your own
level of life, the greater the unavoidable and hidden cannibalization. The
following comparisons of energy sources and free time capture the gist of
this statement.

As actual cannibals, human beings eat other people. If cannibalism was legal,
how much time would we have for free thought if we were the hunters or the
hunted? As beasts of burden, human beings can pull plows through fields.
How much free time does a person have who is dead tired after a day in the
field? As miners, we provide coal to power steam engines in the fields. As
lab researchers, we can harness the cheap energy that fuels not only the
stars themselves, but all levels of life. One's overall free time and quality
of life increases as one distances oneself from the source of energy (time).

Divide and Divine

Divining more time requires more than promotion of new ways of creating time
and multiplication of the old ways. It requires an elimination of wasted
time and a conservation of needed time. Between optimal creation and conservation
of time, a government can fulfill the ultimate timistic function of divining
more time: immortality.

To fulfill the ultimate purpose of government, its policy-makers must observe
a few basic relationships. First, the economical "more" precedes the moral
"more" which in turn precedes the immortal "more." If people's basic standard
of living is declining due to rising taxation, inflation and unemployment,
morality will also decline.

Secondly, the divining of more time requires the dividing of time: specifically,
the divisioning of people's time with an eye to ruling themselves through
relevant democracy.* This divisioning of subunits'
time to promote more time for the whole and its parts echos the Kreb's Cycle
in the body of a farmer. Good laws encourage and reward people to divide
their time between solving both private and public problems. Only through
such a democratic divisioning, with appropriate power and responsibility,
can people expect to rule time-wasting problems out of their lives. In theory,
adequate solving of time-wasting problems should bring immortality.

Warning: Anyone found
stealing lifehours will be forever banned from participation in and rewards
of Better Democracy and Capitalism.